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Those struggling to quit smoking may find that success is just a text message away.
A study done by researchers at Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., showed that smokers who used a text-messaging program to help them quit were more than two times as successful at quitting compared to those who did not get assistance from text messages.
Text message assistance operates by giving ... Jump to full article >>

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In 1963, a young Korean war veteran and committed 40-a-day smoker called Herbert A Gilbert from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, filed a patent for a product he described as a “smokeless non-tobacco cigarette”. It functioned by gently heating a nicotine solution and producing inhalable steam, thereby “replacing burning tobacco and paper with heated, moist, flavoured air”.
As the health risks of tobacco-smoking slowly bega ... Jump to full article >>

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Long term smokers have a 50:50 chance of dying before their time, and sometimes decades before. It’s pretty much the riskiest legal habit you can have. So hats off to Allen Carr, the former accountant who helped millions quit smoking before succumbing to lung cancer, aged 72. Carr had his first cigarette at sixteen, and by middle age was getting through a hundred a day. He stopped however in 1983, but alas was still exposed to the poison ... Jump to full article >>

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A new study suggests that e-cigarettes don’t actually help people to quit smoking, but its authors have raised doubts about their own research.
Nothing quite divides anti-tobacco advocates these days like the debate on whether e-cigarettes can actually help people quit. So a study like this one from the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education is bound to draw attention.
The science on e-cigarettes is still young, adding to the c ... Jump to full article >>

Environment | admin | March 25, 2014 | Comments Off on Do e-cigarettes help people quit smoking?

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One of the most effective ways South Carolina could improve the health of its residents would be to help them quit smoking or prevent them from taking up the habit in the first place. But the state spends almost no money to do that.
Anti-smoking groups are upset at the fact that, of the $68 million the state receives from the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, not a penny goes to smoking cessation or prevention programs. The anti-smoking ... Jump to full article >>

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Every day, more than 3,200 kids under the age of 18 smoke a cigarette for the first time. About 700 of those become daily smokers.
Those are two reasons, the Food and Drug Administration says, why it has launched a national education campaign aimed at preventing those between the ages of 12 and 17 from trying cigarettes or — for those already experimenting — from becoming regular smokers.
“The Real Cost” campaign see ... Jump to full article >>

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Electronic cigarettes, those hip new cigarettes that blow a thick white vapor rather than smoke, are clearly less harmful than real cigarettes.
But that doesn’t mean e-cigarettes are harmless.
And until we know something different, that’s how we ought to treat them.
Folks who are wary of e-cigarettes — battery-operated nicotine inhalers that do not produce smoke — are going after them on two fronts. This group includes Mayor Rahm Em ... Jump to full article >>

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Will larger health warning labels on cigarette packets prevent the young from smoking? European legislators certainly hope so.
Images of decayed teeth, missing toes and lung cancer have, for some time, been used to try and discourage smokers from lighting up the next cigarette – without much in the way of results. Labels informing users of the potential health hazards have hardly been more successful. With the high-level threshold people ... Jump to full article >>

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It’s not that they are all hopeless addicts. Many smokers are capable of quitting.
It’s not that they are ignorant. Studies show that smokers are at least as informed as nonsmokers about the risks of smoking — and possibly more informed.
You might suspect, then, that smokers tend to be risk takers by nature. And some evidence suggests that smokers do take more risks than nonsmokers: they are more often involved in traffic accidents, l ... Jump to full article >>

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Selling cigarettes in unbranded packs seems to make tobacco less appealing and encourages smokers to quit, suggests a study.
The work comes from Australia – the first country to introduce plain packaging.
The BMJ Open research looked at the impact of the policy on 536 smokers in the state of Victoria.
The findings come days after ministers were criticised for putting on hold a plan to impose plain packs in England.
Downing Street deni ... Jump to full article >>